Lighting Equipment Choice Help

Currently, I just use a Chauvet Colorstrip ($199.00) and the Mini Galaxian ($99.00). Can’t forget the light stand, though ($89.00). Currently saving for some new lights though, as my lights are fairly simple. Personally, I’m not a fan of the derby lights (the ones that shoot the dots around like a disco ball) because to me, that’s not modern.

I say stick with slim LED par cans and maybe a laser. Fog machines are cool, too.

Cheap beginner setup, I would not recommend lasers as in the UK you have to be certified to use the real good lasers and the others will look like childs play.

I would advice to get one good flower effect (like the ADJ Revo series), yes it is dots, but good dots.  And then some simple RGB LED lights (like ADJ MegaTriPar Profile). The ADJ Mega has the advantage that you can control them with the (not included) remote which is also cheap to get.

From there you can easily expand then, but for a dancefloor up to 50 people that is easily enough.

For a 12×12 room I would say the minimum would be 4 RGB cans, if you can invest in 8 that would be very nice. For 12×12 even one Revo can do well if placed right as it has a huge angle of display.

As for fog or haze… I like fog as I like to control when I fog it up and sometimes you need to let the fog go, because people react badly to it.

The problem with fog machines is that the cheap ones will also make cheap looking fog. So the minimum I would recommend is something like the ADJ Fog Storm 1200.

Haze I only use for band stuff, where you have a podium or stage that can do with some haze and that flows nicely. A simple ADJ Haze generator will do, as it is heaterless it is instant haze for a song if need be.

Indeed in your case I would use them as “hangers” to float the dancefloor.

For uplighting walls I rather use LED bars and you need A LOT of them to really make it work nicely, hence on the budget you are I would not consider that yet. For spot uplighting you can use LED cans for some good effects, but you need even more cans… so for now go with the hanging setup I would say.